In view of the the evolution and growth of the global internet of things, (IoT), KANTAR TNS, one of the world’s leading research, data, insight and consulting company held its Fintech summit to discuss the future of financial Technology in the country.

The summit tagged: “Payment of Tomorrow and Changing Consumer”, brought together  Financial Technology experts and leading business executive to discuss, analyze the Fintech Industry in Nigeria with a view to position the industry, players and the consumers for tomorrow.

The CEO, Kantar Nigeria, Aggrey Maposa in his opening speech explains that the world has changed and Fintech is taking over and changing the financial activities of the consumers.

According to him ‘Fintech has come to stay, it is not a fashion because it is based on real need for change” he noted that the Nigeria Fintech industry is coming a bit late, but the industry in Nigeria is still doing so well and in just about 3 to 4 years of introduction, “we have recorded a growth of 90% and this is to show we are coming up”, he said.

The keynote speaker, Mr Adesonubi Adebisi of Nigeria Interbank settlement Plc analyzing the data of the FINTECH Industry in the past few years, pointed out that mobile users in Nigeria are about 29 million and the mobile banking is growing in the country compare to others.

In his words, ‘internet banking is slowing down; mobile banking is growing and USSD  also growing while ATM usage remains stagnant in the past 3 years’. Now, consumers engage more with the mobile world because it is fast and convenient,  card transaction/POS is also growing while cheque transaction remains stagnant.

He noted that the larger value transactions are reducing while the smaller value transactions are increasing every time because customers are able to engage themselves with mobile banking which result in increase in bank transactions. However, the number of bank customers are not increasing significantly but the number of bank account is increasing, he also noted.

According to him, in the capital market, the number of registered shareholder is approximately 2.1 million while 838,674 could only be identified and 433,164 are the unique individual in the capital market This is as a result of the integration of the BVN to customers’ account in order to monitor real time payments.

Over the years, FINTECH (E-nnovation) engagement spanned across many sectors which includes the E commerce, Property Rentals, Customer Loyalty and awareness programme. However, Nigeria is still predominantly using cash over cashless transactions with 80% of transaction record being in cash and 20% cashless, compared to other countries.

Also speaking on the theme, Mr Jonathan Chocquel Mangan, Chief Strategy and transformation officer at Kantar, said realizing opportunities for growth requires unique consumer focus and insight.

“We must understand the consumer’s need at each point in time so as to meet those needs. In order to get your customer to drop their suppliers and choose you, you need to get insight on what they need’’ he said, emphasising that the where, what and how to get insight to consumer experience is very important.

He noted that bank transactions in the country is predominantly offline compared to Ghana and Kenya but more generally, Nigeria consumers are very mobile centric. In Nigeria, cash is still the king but ATM, Mobile Banking are closing the gap very quickly.

Consumer purpose of using mobile banking varies from personal care, education, utility bill and with all these, they have core option while they make use of their choice of payment system. These include – Trust, Simplicity and Security.

“How secure is the option that it won’t erode their privacy and personal information; how trustworthy is it and how simple is it, can it be accessible by both young and old? All these are what they are expecting Fintech to solve. Nevertheless, consumer tends to buy more of a product base on reliability as consumers will likely tell a bad experience 5 times as again one for a good experience”

Focusing his presentation on “Mobile Opportunities in Nigeria”, the CEO Kantar Africa, Mr Charles Foster explained that mobile research is no longer the future in Africa rather it is here now. According to him, half of the mobile are already Smartphones in Nigeria not far from US.

He maintained that mobile research can do more than face to face research in collecting data. He also predicted that by year 2020, 730 million growth in mobile subscribers would be achieved and this is possible by knowing what consumer needs.

Financial Technology expert at the summit agreed that Fintech has come to stay and it is not going away. According to Mr. Deji Oguntonade, Head of Fintech and Innovation GTbank,  Fintech is applying technology to Financial Activities and since financial activities is not going to phase out, Fintech is going nowhere.

Responding to questions on whether Fintech is sustainable, Mr Victor Okigbo, Project Director, Africa Fintech Founding said Fintech is not a fade, it has come to stay and there can only be more innovations to it.

The interactive session established that the rate of Fintech growth in Nigeria compared to Kenya and South Africa, is still behind.  This is attributed to the security lapses. “Consumers are not really sure if they are secured because they feel they are not in control which makes security a big concern in Nigeria’s digital payment space”

Responding to journalists on the challenge on digital payment, Mr Aggrey said cyber security remains a problem globally , there are lot of security measures Fintech has in place beyond what the consumer knows, the only way is to educate the people that they are secured, he explained adding that Fintech and financial institution need to have strong back-end so as to monitor any suspicious financial activities.

On whether Fintech is to take away job from  people, Mr Maposa said Fintech doesn’t take away job rather  it changes job, jobs are changing faster so  people need to change and it is necessary to acquire more skills to be relevant.